Memoirs of the monster's brother
by Akatsuki-Branch
Summary: The sand siblings. Everyone knows them. Temari, the Girl. Gaara, the former demon monster and the current Kazekage. And then, there's Kankuro, the middle son, the Puppet Master and the only one who would speak his mind around Gaara, to a point.
1. Chapter 1

**We don't own naruto, now please read and enjoy. :)**

**Emi**

Memoirs of the Monster's Brother

The sand siblings. Everyone knows them. Temari, the Girl. Gaara, the (former) demon monster and the current Kazekage. And then, there's Kankuro, the middle son, the Puppet Master and the only one who would speak his mind around Gaara… to a point. How do you grow up with a monster brother? Especially when you're the older one?

Ch 1- Baby

The day my brother was born, I realized something. Everything I'd ever known to be true in my life was a lie. Peanut butter ice cream wasn't my favorite flavor. The color green looked repulsive to me. No one would play with me anymore. They were too busy looking at 'the baby'. No one had any time for me anymore. People would run in our home, scowling. There were a lot of people shouting and yelling. The baby didn't scream or cry. I thought all babies cried and screamed. I was wrong again.

I was really young when my brother was born, and I can still remember before it. Before I dealt with the terror of the sands. His name was 'Gaara'. He would be the heir. The youngest of us, and yet the most important. My sister and I, our tasks were clear. Watch the boy, grow up, train to be our best, and protect the 'ultimate weapon' at all costs. Our goal was always him. We were never meant to think that it was us with the worth. We were tools, to help our brother along the way.

I didn't get this when he was born. I just wondered why, that with all the people running around, no one was celebrating? No one was happy. From what my sister and my mother had told me, babies were a good thing. People loved it when children were born. I didn't get it then. I figured my mom would tell me later. But at the time, not one person looked even remotely happy that Gaara had been born. They'd been waiting nine months for their 'ultimate weapon' and I can only guess that father was disappointed that he was a baby and wouldn't be useful for many more years.

Maybe even then he was beginning to wonder if his precious weapon would ever be useful, or if his window of opportunity would be wasted by the time the boy was old enough to use his talents. Me and Temari were eventually shuffled off to our nursery. We hadn't gotten to see the baby or our mother yet, and both of us were pretty upset.

I don't remember when they told us that she was dead. I don't remember who did it, how they did it, or how they made our young minds understand. But we knew. And though that baby didn't cry, you can bet that we did.

I can remember my mom. I don't know how, apparently I have a good memory. I'm glad. You see, my father wasn't really much of a dad besides the whole 'look after the precious chosen weapon who will one day lead us to victory and greatness' thing. I guess to him, we weren't worth much. We were annoyances, minors he had to actually take care of before they were powerful ninjas who could help him advance in life.

Unlike what most people think, we weren't upset with Gaara for killing our mom. We knew it wasn't his fault, I wasn't that far out of babydom myself that I could blame the little infant for killing her. And, unlike what most people believe, I loved my baby brother. I got to hold him, mainly because I kept asking and no one else wanted to. I got to help feed him formula, and I tried to teach him how to talk when I barely knew myself. I used to point at random objects and try to pronounce their names, and half the time I got the object wrong. I was convinced that a chair was called a bed and a broom was a bear for the better half of my first five years of life… I confused Gaara so bad… it was great. I used to outline the baby in chalk, then me and Temari would investigate his 'murder'. I always laughed… it was fun. The only thing bad about having the baby was that we didn't have our mom anymore. At least we had Uncle Yashimaru for a while.

I never saw my father smile. Hell, I don't even know if I ever saw his face, it was always hidden behind that stupid veil. Whenever I did see him, he was watching Gaara with cold, calculating eyes. I remember, once, when I was two or three, Temari brought our father some flowers she'd picked. He took them and walked away. She was so happy, and to this day I think she still is proud. But I saw them two weeks later wilted and dead in the trash. I hid them under some other things so she would be happy. I didn't like upsetting my sister; she would chase me and hit me. I couldn't hit back because she was a girl.

She also used to make me wear dresses and drink tea. I was so happy when she became a tomboy and started tackling me in flag football instead. I prefer sand burns to lace and stuffed animals. That wasn't until we were older. But with the baby around, when we got out of our lessons to see him, I could make HIM attend Temari's teas! It's where he picked up the bear. He still has it somewhere, though he'd deny it to the ends of Suna and back. With the baby around, we had three people to play with. Even if one of them could only coo and puke, it was still relatively alright. Most of the time we got to play with him as a baby.

But he never slept, even as a baby, he wouldn't. If he did, we were far, far away and to this day I don't know if Shukaku was out or not. I'd rather not know, to be completely honest. He was such a cute baby, so nice, sweet-tempered, never cried. Apparently he was a blessing compared to me. I was colicky, fussy, loud, and had the nicest set of lungs a baby could ask for. Temari was spacey, and didn't really care as long as she was held. Set her down for a second and she'd wail like a banshee. She still did that up until the time Gaara was born. Then one day she was put down on the ground and she cried for four hours straight. Finally someone told her to shut up and slapped her. After that, I don't ever remember seeing my sister cry.

Things were usual when Gaara was a baby. He learned fast, crawling at five months, walking at ten, speaking well and understandably at a little less than a year. And his babyhood was over with by the time he was about twenty months old.

Some days I still miss it.


	2. Chapter 2

**DISCLAIMER: DON'T OWN. **

When Gaara got slightly older, the real fun began. Instead of only me and a helpless infant against Temari and her teas, it was me and another little kid running away. I don't know if he remembers these days or not, but they stand out vividly in my memory as the times where Gaara was actually, well, normal. We still stayed far away from him at night, among other precautions. My father wasn't done using me or Temari yet, and he was slightly concerned that we'd be killed if we came upon the demon.

I remember once, when I was around five, I had a nightmare. Ever since my mother died, my brother born, I didn't bother anyone with my night terrors. No one had the time to coddle and comfort a crying child when there was the ultimate weapon to care for. I'd woken up sweating, crying into my pillow. Temari was asleep beside me on another bed. We stayed together most nights, when Gaara was taken away from us. I didn't wake up Temari, my plan was to go and get a snack from the kitchen. Food always helped me calm down. I went to the door to open it… but it was locked from the outside. Scared, I tried the bathroom door. It was unlocked, and I began to think the other door was just a mistake. I tried the door that connected the bathroom to the hallway. Locked. Then I began to panic. I woke up Temari, pointing and whisper-shouting. She smacked me and told me I was turning the handle the wrong way.

She went to the door and turned the handle. Nothing. It was locked. Her face twisted in fear as she ran for the other doors connecting us to the hallway. All of them were locked. She climbed on my shoulders and tried the windows. Locked, locked, locked, all from the outside, we were locked in. Temari was still staring out the window when she gasped, screamed, and fell off of my shoulders onto the floor, out cold. She had that bruise on her head for two months afterwards, and she woke up convinced the entire episode was a dream, and that she'd simply rolled off the bed onto the floor and hit her head on a corner while dreaming.

But I knew it wasn't a dream. I knew she'd seen something terrible that night. Now, even to this day, I only can suspect what she saw. I'm not positive if it was Shukaku or an oddly shaped cloud. I also don't know if she knew it wasn't a dream. She's never talked about the episode since, ever, and in the nights to come, she'd always wake up screaming some nonsense about windows and darkness. To this day she still has heavy curtains up, and every night before she goes to sleep she opens them up, covering any chance of window light.

And I was careful to never go near the doors again if I woke up at night.

The days, however, were full of fun until the training began. I'd drag Gaara around, hiding from Temari and her 'beat up my little sibling' games. She was a bossy, stubborn girl, and me and Gaara were no match for her temper or her strong will. So whenever we could, we'd leave the mansion and play outside in the sand. I taught him how to build a sandcastle, his first one was a terrible, shapeless blob, but he was proud of it, molding it even as I turned my back to make a face at the ground. I turned back around, and he had a towering four-foot castle complete with ditch for the water I'd brought with us and a draw bridge he could move up and down.

I've never beaten him in a sandcastle contest. Actually, there never was a contest. I stopped building castles with him after a while and just brought my little miniature puppets outside so we could play with them in the massive castles and forts Gaara created. Temari didn't like it very much, but neither of us cared. We'd play all kinds of games. Our favorite was to steal Temari's dolls, tie rubber bands to their heels, and throw them over the side of the sand forts bungee jumping. She'd yell at us later for getting sand on them, but it was only halfhearted. Even Temari couldn't stay mad for long at the little redheaded kid with his giant blue-green eyes that just screamed innocence.

Besides, she liked throwing my puppet miniatures out of her window. She said she was teaching them how to fly, but I knew better. Puppets couldn't fly. Looking back, I have to laugh at how stupid I was. I thought she was the idiot for believing they could fly in the first place, when in reality she never thought that at all. I was the little fool.

Gaara grew like a normal kid. The other children were afraid of him, didn't want to play with him, but he always had me. We'd play by ourselves, our own little games of cards and catch and target practice. He was always sad when they ran from him; he wasn't a bad kid. He was downright cheerful. Never complained. Never got cut up, bruised, or anything. That was always me, coming in with broken arms, cuts, scabs, bruises, you name it. I've been to the hospital so many times the doctors all know me by name, and the nurses always sneak me extra food.

Gaara never was injured, but he was almost at the hospital as much as I was, our father making sure that his 'precious weapon' was alright. He had all kinds of tests done on him, although I'm not sure how they got him to take his shots. My father only came to see the results, he never was there during the tests, he didn't have to watch a terrified little boy surrounded by strangers in white coats. I was there with him, most of the time, and Temari was as well. We held his hands and calmed him down and got him lollipops for after the scans or pricks or wires or whatever it was that day.

They all softened up to me and Temari eventually, but very few softened up to Gaara. He was treated different, and for the longest time I didn't understand why. Yashimaru tried to explain it to me, how people were afraid, but I couldn't comprehend it. Afraid of Gaara, my little brother? The redhead I'd seen cry when children ran away, the boy I played ninja with? No way. It couldn't have been that reason. I simply thought Yashimaru had it wrong. After all, Gaara was my baby brother, he'd never done anything to harm me, and besides, I could always beat him up, right?

The first time I ever got mad at Gaara I was seven and he was slightly younger. He'd walked in to my room and broken my favorite marionette while playing with it. I came in to find him desperately trying to glue it together, his panicked blue-green eyes shining. I yelled at him and tried to hit him. All I hit was sand. I tried again, and again, and again, each time just hitting sand. Eventually, my shouts and Gaara's soft screams brought adults, and I was immediately taken out and punished quickly, severely, and quietly save for my whimpers. After, I walked back in and apologized, gave him a hug, and started to fix the shattered leg. Gaara left, and I didn't think anything of it. Little did I know it was the last time I'd ever see my sweet baby brother. That night, they put me and Temari in a room together. We both knew the doors were locked. We just didn't know why. We didn't want to.


End file.
